


Haven

by belovedmuerto



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Sexy Times, empath!John, experiments in empathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their homecoming is quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haven

**Author's Note:**

> This follows after 'Coping'. 'Games' is sort of the outlier here. Sorry about that. 
> 
> Thanks go to PrettyArbitrary, thisprettywren and Castiron as always. <3\. Anything I didn't correct or add or whatever is totally my fault and not theirs. They tried, I got grumpy, you know how it goes.

Their homecoming is quiet. The train ride back into London is quiet; they are practically the only ones in the car, and Sherlock spends most of it slumped over and taking up two and a half seats with his head on John’s shoulder, asleep, making the odd occasional snuffling snore into John’s neck. The cab ride from Victoria to Baker Street is quiet; traffic is light and the cabbie doesn’t make idle small talk. John is strangely thankful, as the cabbie’s mood seems to be distinctly not cheerful, and he doesn’t want to let reality intrude yet on the calm and peace that he’s felt since getting to Sussex.

Mrs. Hudson comes out of 221A to welcome them home, but she’s not effusive in her welcome, she’s not loud or emotional. John and Sherlock both smile at her, give her kisses on the cheek and quick hugs and hellos. 

“I was going to make tea for you boys,” she says with her usual good cheer, “but Mycroft’s young lady was by earlier today with several gentlemen and they brought a lot of food. They even put the cold things away, though I did the rest of it.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Hudson,” John says.

Sherlock merely curses under his breath and dashes up the stairs.

“Sorry, Mrs. H,” John adds with a smile. “You know how he is.”

“I do, dear,” Mrs Hudson replies with an indulgent smile of her own. John has to take a minute to realize he’s picking up her mood more strongly than he should be, and adjust his mental walls to a stronger filter. 

“Go on then, calm him down,” she adds. “Have a good evening. It’s good to have you boys home. Despite the trouble you get up to, the place just doesn’t feel right without you here.”

John smiles at her, gives her another kiss on the cheek, and heads upstairs after Sherlock.

\----

Sherlock scours the flat for bugs, always his first fear when Mycroft or his people have been by; John looks on. He doesn’t find anything. He’s been even more aggravated by his brother’s intrusions than before, since Mycroft stole John.

He doesn’t find any listening devices at all. He doesn’t even find anything out of place. Not even his sock index has been disturbed. There’s more, he files away his observations for later perusal and permanent filing, letting them go for now.

“You know, all he really needs to do is assign Anthea or one of the other telepaths he must have to sit out in the street in a car for a few hours. He’ll get everything he could possibly want,” John points out from the sofa, where he’s checking the headlines on his laptop: The Guardian, The Times, the Daily Mail, Huffington Post, the BBC and CNN. Sherlock knows that John avoids most of the headlines regarding American politics, but he does find their world coverage interesting at times. Sorely lacking in scope, but interesting. Sherlock does not share his good opinion.

Sherlock pauses to stare at John for a moment. “That is not reassuring, John.”

“Not really, no. Sorry.”

\----

John makes dinner, later in the evening. He’d been vaguely surprised at just how well-stocked Mycroft’s minions had left the cupboards, at how thoroughly they’d scrubbed the fridge, the neatness with which the science was relegated to a single shelf, labeled and in order of most hazardous in the back to least in the front.

Mycroft is still apologizing to his brother--and possibly to John as well, though John had said yes--with food.

Sherlock refuses a plate of his own, and John refuses to serve himself more than a single helping, so he ends up going back for seconds, and Sherlock ends up eating almost a full portion without provocation from John, so he lets it go, reluctant to have a row over Sherlock’s eating habits, or his manner, or his insistence over eating from John’s plate. At least Sherlock’s eating. 

It’s a quiet night. Sherlock is slow of thought and relaxed with it once he knows that Mycroft hasn’t left behind any means of spying on them, returning to that pleasant, quiet mood he gets into when they’re in the country. 

John is pretty sure they will eventually retire to that cottage, and he finds the idea of it intensely pleasurable, though he’s nowhere near ready to give up his life here with Sherlock to move to the countryside just yet. He is, however, glad Sherlock is like this, it’s relaxing for him as well.

If it were anyone else in this mood of Sherlock’s, John would call it contentedness. He dare not speak the word around Sherlock though; he doesn’t want to risk it all falling down around his ears. Sherlock curls against John’s side on the sofa after dinner and reads something in possibly Portuguese while John watches mindless telly until he’s decided it’s late enough for bed. When he gently shifts from under Sherlock’s weight and rises, Sherlock grumbles a bit but closes his book and rises as well, following close behind John to the bedroom without a word.

\----

“This is your mattress, not mine,” Sherlock murmurs in his ear, sliding into bed behind John and slipping an arm across his waist. John is half asleep already and pliant with it, allowing Sherlock to manhandle him until Sherlock is comfortable and then going limp against his warm friend/flatmate/whatever-they-are. Significant other might work. Partner is probably most accurate and closest to encompassing everything. Lover sounds strange in John’s head. Head-mate could work, though no one would get it. Pair-bonded other half? Also too hard to explain. Bond-mate? Whatever; he is Sherlock’s and Sherlock is his, that’s enough to be going on with.

“Asked Mycroft to have them switched,” John mumbles back.

“Why?”

“Mine’s more comfortable; said so yourself.”

Sherlock makes a small noise. “Did you ask him to take down the picture of Poe as well?”

“Yeah. No creepy dead authors where I sleep.” The painting from the cottage of the bee that John so loves hangs in its place. “Been bugging me for ages.”

“It doesn’t fit. With the room.”

“Too bad.”

“What did you do with Poe?”

“He’s in the lounge with that Doyle chap you seem so enamored of.”

Sherlock chuckles. John can feel him going through his recollections of the day, piece by piece, observation by observation, wondering how how he’d failed to notice.

“You know you’re the only man for me, John,” he says, soft against John’s ear.

John makes a noise of contentment and settles into sleep.

\----

Sherlock has a nightmare that night, somewhere in the darkness between 3AM and dawn, when the night is deepest. He is whimpering, moaning incoherent words into the room, sending terror shooting up John’s spine, breaking them both out in goosebumps.

It takes John a long time to rouse him from it, gently shaking him, repeating his name over and over, telling him it’s all right, he’s only dreaming, hating the tremor that creeps into his voice as he gets increasingly upset along with Sherlock. He’s never learned the trick of soothing Sherlock without waking him, the way Sherlock does for him. The lay together for a long time after Sherlock finally wakes, John stroking his hands continually up and down Sherlock’s back while he trembles and his breath heaves. 

The pleasant haze leftover from the trip is gone.

John murmurs bedtime stories until Sherlock finally slips back into sleep.

\----

If Sherlock’s sleep was further disturbed, he shows absolutely no sign of it the next day. 

There are a few small cases vying for his attention on his site; he reads them aloud to John one by one with commentary, and they share a laugh over them. None are quite as ridiculous as that time a young girl emailed Sherlock asking him to find Bluebell the glowing rabbit, disappeared from his hutch overnight, but still: simple things, the stuff Sherlock hardly needs think about to solve.

He does solve them though, quickly. None are actually worth his time, but John gets tense lines around his eyes when Sherlock gets too bored, when they’ve been too long without a paying case. So he’ll take these, with the paltry sums they bring in.

Lestrade calls him that night, late, waking him up, with a far more interesting case. He pulls John from bed by throwing a jumper at his head and shouting “Case, John! Come on!” and they’re off. The case occupies him for the rest of the week.

\----

John had wondered, idly, if the introduction of physical intimacy--

Okay, _more_ physical intimacy than what they’d already shared-- 

Okay, _sex_ \--

would change Sherlock in some way. If he’d be insatiable, if it would alter something about him.

He needn’t have worried. In fact, he feels more than a little bit silly that he was worried to begin with.

Sherlock seems to have completely forgot about physical intimacy, as well as the mind-to-mind intimacy they shared before that. At least, he seems to have forgot them for the time being. Or else he’s simply put all thought of it out of his mind for the time being. And John’s ok with that. He’s not one to push. He’s given it a bit of thought actually--Sherlock’s libido that is--in the idle moments during the case. He finds himself not surprised that Sherlock forgets these things when he has a puzzle to occupy his mind.

And it’s fine. Always is.

He’s certainly not harboring any desires to change Sherlock. He wouldn’t have fallen for the man if he were otherwise, and no matter how annoying he sometimes is, John wouldn’t change him now even if given the chance. (Not anymore than he already has, involuntarily.)

But that’s all beside the point. 

The point is he’s not getting laid, and he’s a little sad about that. They’d spent most of their time at the cottage in bed; two glorious weeks, and he had enjoyed every moment of it, every caress, every orgasm given and received.

But it’s fine. It’s all fine. 

Sherlock hadn’t shown any compunctions against initiating sex while they were in Sussex. In fact, he’d been rather enthusiastic about it, and John decides to let him set the pace now that they’re home. He’s fine with it, he’ll wait for Sherlock to decide or remember and they’ll go from there.

\----

The case ends, as they often do, with the perpetrator arrested and Sherlock triumphant. Thankfully it doesn’t end the other way. They stop to eat at the dim sum place around the corner from the flat as it’s late when they finish giving their statements to the police, and it’s the only place still open. The owner knows them there, and doesn’t even bother taking their order, just shows them to the table in the back where they always sit, and starts to bring the usual.

Sherlock thinks he could ring up Angelo and get him to put something together for them quick, but John vetoes that idea, proclaiming Chinese to be just the thing.

They eat too much and walk back to the flat in companionable silence. 

“I’m for bed,” John announces as he hangs up his coat.

“Mmm,” Sherlock replies. He punctuates it with a yawn.

“Are you going to join me?”

“I think I’ll shower first.”

“All right.” John reaches up and presses a quick kiss to Sherlock’s cheek. “Try not to wake me, OK?”

“Of course, John.”

\----

When Sherlock wakes up, the bed next to him is empty, the sheets cool. That’s not particularly surprising, as John usually sleeps a bit more than he does during cases and thus not as long after. For a few minutes he stays in bed, stretching. He feels... sated. Quiet, his brain still satisfied with the conclusion of the case. There’s a strange sort of undercurrent there, however, one he cannot readily identify, and he’s still picking at it when he shuffles into the kitchen.

“Morning,” John calls from the lounge.

“Tea?” 

“Kettle should still be hot.”

Sherlock grumbles and shuffles into the lounge, where he finds John stretched out on the sofa with the novel he’s still working his way through. He hadn’t read as much of it in Sussex as he’d planned.

Instead of making himself tea, he shuffles across the lounge and drops down on the sofa next to John, who shifts so that Sherlock can lean comfortably against him.

“Anything on today?”

“Probably not.”

“We OK with that?” John-code for “Are you going to be bored and destructive? Do I need to set Mrs Hudson and the emergency services on alert?”

“No, John, you don’t. I’m fine. I have some notes to go through from what I was working on in Sussex.”

“Wasn’t that mostly me?” John waggles his eyebrows.

Sherlock chuckles. “Indeed.”

\----

The bolt of lust that shoots through Sherlock at the sight of John, still sprawled on the sofa in the soft, late afternoon light is something of a surprise. For a moment, he’s able to step back, to realize that they’ve been home from Sussex for over a week now, and he hasn’t once reached for John, not mentally, not physically. And they’d spent pretty much the whole two weeks they’d been in Sussex in bed. 

He wonders at himself. The paper that he’d been about to ask John to read is completely forgotten. He wonders at John, that John hasn’t reached for him either, and realizes that John has been waiting on him.

John is smiling at him, eyes half-lidded. “Took you a while,” he observes.

“John,” he breathes. It is many things, a plea, an apology, a prayer.

John stretches, his arms over his head, back arched, and Sherlock may actually whimper. He loves this, this suggestion of sexiness. Far prefers it to what most people consider sexy. It’s far more interesting. John shifts again, lifting his knee against the back of the sofa and planting his foot, dropping his other leg open, towards the coffee table, an invitation, his erection just starting to distend the soft fabric of his pyjama bottoms.

Sherlock crosses the room, floats, his feet don’t even touch the ground, ends up on his knees next to the sofa, face pressed into the crook of John’s neck, inhaling as deep as his lungs will allow. He can feel John stretching, wrapping around him, seeping into him, feels John turn and press his lips against Sherlock’s forehead.

“Sorry,” Sherlock murmurs against John’s neck. He takes another deep breath; breathing in John, breathing with John.

“Don’t be,” John replies, voice quiet, barely more than a murmur, perfect and lovely. “You don’t have to be sex-mad, love, as long as you let me know when you do want it.”

“I do. I want.”

John chuckles. “I can tell. C’mere.”

Sherlock levers himself to his feet and stretches out, lowering himself gently onto John, between his legs, bodies aligned, his hardening cock pressed through the fabric of his trousers against John’s hardening cock through the fabric of his pyjama bottoms. John makes a pleased sound that Sherlock mirrors, pressing his forehead against John’s and letting his eyes fall shut.

For this moment, all is quiet and perfect, still and calm, hovering on the precipice of _more_. 

John eventually moves his arms from above his head to Sherlock's lower back, tugging his shirt tail out of his trousers so he can get his hands on the soft skin at the small of his back. Sherlock moves, bumping their noses together; instead of turning it into a kiss, he moves again, nosing gently into John's cheek, against his temple, under his ear, along his jaw. John stretches his neck up to allow better access, and Sherlock obliges him, nuzzling his neck with nose and then lips. 

"John," he murmurs, rocking against the man beneath him. Both are slowly filling out to full hardness against the other. It is an utterly decadent feeling, and the slow grind of Sherlock's hips only emphasizes that.

John gasps and his fingers tighten, digging into the skin of Sherlock's back. He draws his leg up, running his foot up the back of Sherlock’s leg in encouragement and sighs, "Sherlock."

His name sounds like a plea falling from John's lips, and Sherlock lifts his head to watch the pleasure on John's face as he rocks again, and again.

"Sherlock," John sighs again, voice breaking just a little. He writhes, and Sherlock gives in, lowering his head to capture John's lips with his own, rocking into him again as he does so.

He sinks into the kiss, into John, amazed at himself, that he'd let this slip his mind, this intimacy, this closeness, this mingling of mind and heart all in the body of _John_.

John moans into his mouth and Sherlock swallow the sound, cherishes it. Sherlock lets his weight drop fully, heavily against John so he can run his hands up and down John's side while they kiss, trying to get at skin. He needs more skin, to be close, impossibly closer. He wants to crawl inside John's breath, his lungs, his heart, sink into his mind, live within him.

It's John who breaks the kiss, gasping. Sherlock chases his lips, drawing him in again, not willing to let go. Their tongues tangle, John sucking on his obscenely; it puts Sherlock in mind of more, of sweat and moans and nakedness, of wanting. But John breaks the kiss again, relinquishing his lips and his tongue to gasp, "Bed. Sherlock, bed."

Sherlock has to stop for a moment to process that, though he doesn’t stop pressing soft, wet kisses along John's jaw.

"Bed. Yes," he manages to slur into John's neck. He sounds drunk. He feels drunk, with lust, with the desire that surges between them, back and forth like the tide.

It takes him a moment to figure out he needs to get off of John, to stand, to move if they are going to relocate. It takes another moment for him to get his arms moving enough to lever himself up to his knees so he can stand.

He is gratified to see the erection John is sporting. John sees him looking and grins at him, struggling to sit up. John’s pupils are blown wide with desire; Sherlock expects his own are as well.

"I wouldn't normally interrupt," John says as he gains his feet, holding out a hand to help Sherlock up, “but I want you naked and I want you all over me and I don't fancy getting my arse stuck to this awful sofa."

Sherlock can't help himself, he bursts into laughter. John joins him, tugging him along into their room. He loves the joy that John feels in this, he loves John’s mirth.

For a gloriously tense moment they stand in the middle if the bedroom, looking at each other.

"Undress me, Sherlock."

Sherlock nods. He moves closer to John--never close enough-- and tugs at the hem of his vest, lifting it over his head. John reaches up and starts undoing the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt, and Sherlock watches him.

The lust buzzing between them is warm, and it's tempered by all the other emotions that tangle around them, the affection and love, exasperation and patience, the care and concern. It swirls around and through them, ebbs and flows, drawing them ever closer together, bound by mind and heart.

When John is finished with his placket and cuffs, Sherlock shrugs out of his shirt, stepping closer again and pulling at the tie of John’s pyjama bottoms. They fall easily to the floor, revealing Johns cock, hard and already leaking against his stomach. Sherlock runs his fingers, teasingly light, up the shaft, and John shudders, a soft moan escaping his lips.

"What do you want, Sherlock?" He asks softly, reaching for Sherlock’s flies.

Sherlock thinks for a moment; he has to, his thoughts moving like molasses, sticky with the wanting. His voice is slurred with it when he speaks. "What we were doing. I want to rub all of my skin against all of your skin. I want to be all over you."

"Good." John shoves Sherlock’s trousers and pants down, and they both step out of their respective clothes, moving as one towards the bed. 

John crawls in first, sprawling on his back and beckoning to Sherlock. Sherlock follows him, lowering himself gently against John again.

They both groan, and John smears their lips together again in a messy, deep kiss that leaves them both gasping for breath.

Sherlock breaks the kiss to raise up on his elbows and rock against John again, marveling at the pleasure that suffuses his face, that warms his whole body, starting in his center and radiating outwards.

He can only handle looking at John like this for a few moments before it all starts to overwhelm him. He doesn’t want to stop, but it's very nearly too much. Too much pleasure, too much emotion, too much, overwhelming.

He feels John’s arms and legs go around him, feels John’s fingers thread into his hair, grounding him, holding him in place, keeping him from flying apart, from falling to pieces in the face of all this stimulation. 

"Breathe Sherlock, breathe love, breathe," John’s voice cuts through the noise.

Sherlock breathes.

"That's it. You're ok. We're here, we're both here."

"‘M sorry," he murmurs against the skin of John’s shoulder, next to his scar.

"Hush now, it's fine. Keep breathing. Is there lube nearby?"

The concrete question helps, gives him something to grasp onto, to hold, to give order to his thoughts. Sherlock nods against John's shoulder. "In the nightstand, I think."

"Get it?"

He nods again, and when he moves a little, John lets him go, just enough that he can get the lubricant from the drawer. Sherlock sits back on his heels and hands it to John, who is smiling up at him like nothing's wrong. And maybe it isn't, because they're both still hard, still thrumming with arousal. 

John pours a generous dollop on his hand, gives it a moment to warm, and slathers it on himself, coating his cock and his balls generously, moaning decadently at his own touch. Sherlock watches greedily. When he tears his gaze away, lifting his eyes to John’s face, John is grinning at him again.

"Let me?"

Sherlock nods.

Slowly, with the firm long strokes that Sherlock likes, John spreads the rest of the lube along Sherlock's shaft, slowly, until Sherlock moans, swaying into his touch, slowly, watching Sherlock’s face all the while, licking his lips in an unconscious gesture of desire.

"Is my t-shirt nearby?"

Sherlock pants at him for a moment, but manages to gather enough of his wits to grab the t-shirt off the floor and hand it to John, who wipes his hand off and drops it next to himself.

"Now. Come here and kiss me, Sherlock." John spreads his arms and waits. 

At first, Sherlock leans over him, keeping the kiss almost chaste, but John doesn’t let it stay like that for long. He wraps his arms around Sherlock’s neck and leans up into the kiss, drawing Sherlock deeper into it until he is lost to the lust growing steadily towards crescendo between them.

When Sherlock lowers his body to John’s again, it’s to the sound of a long moan from John. John arches his whole body into Sherlock, who in turn writhes against him. Everything is slick and nearly frictionless between them, and Sherlock can’t help but move, sliding against John and moaning against his neck. 

"That's it, like that," John murmurs in his ear. Sherlock just moans. John wraps his legs around Sherlock’s waist, changing the angle, and surprises Sherlock with the strength of the pleasure that rockets through him, with the volume of his moan.

"Do you like that?" Sherlock asks, smearing their lips together in another messy, deep kiss.

"Christ yes," John replies, gasping, when he can, when they have to relinquish the kiss or else suffocate. "Fuck, Sherlock, don't stop."

Sherlock doesn’t. When he feels like they’re getting too close he changes pace, rocking against John slowly, drawing it out as long as he can. Words are dropping from John’s mouth like a litany, "Please Sherlock, please, I need you."

John is clutching at whatever he can, unable to hold to any one thing for long, Sherlock's back, the sheets, the headboard, his breath coming in gasps, panting, little whining moans coming from deep in his throat, legs wrapped tight around Sherlock's waist.

Sherlock is close to losing it when John gasps, "Push Sherlock, now, hard."

It takes a moment, but he gets it, and pushes, mentally and physically, pressing their bodies and their minds together. John cries out, his body going rigid, and Sherlock feels not just John’s cock pulsing against his own, but every spark and emotion that races through his mind, the way his blood seems to sing in his veins, the intensity of how he feels for Sherlock, and it’s just about enough to send him careening over the precipice himself. He slows again, rocking his hips against John’s, for just a few moments, giving him time to settle back into his body, before John tries to clutch at him, almost manages to grip him tight, and growls, "Let me see you," pushing back.

Sherlock sees stars, everything going spangled and bright for a moment before he collapses against John. Everything stays bright behind his eyes, and he wallows in the hormones flooding his system, in the well-being, in the happiness. He knows that’s what is making him feel this way, this wonderful, this alive, this complete, but he doesn’t care, because it is wonderful and he feels alive and complete. And it’s all because of John, it’s all with John, which makes it even better.

When he's aware of things outside his own head again, John is beneath him, stroking his back, breath even again.

"We're going to stick together," John says. He sounds only vaguely disgusted.

"Not like we haven’t had that happen in the last couple of weeks," Sherlock replies. They both snicker.

"Come on, let's go shower," John says. He sounds and feels utterly sated, utterly content. Sherlock wants to crawl inside him and live in it, in his contentment, as he always does.

"Can we get back in bed after?"

John gives him a sly look. "Oh yeah."


End file.
